Karl Manheim Quotes

To every object there correspond an ideally closed system of truths that are true of it and, on the other hand, an ideal system of possible cognitive processes by virtue of which the object and the truths about it would be given to any cognitive subject.

We can never be quite clear whether we are referring to the world as it is or to the world as we see it.

An object dies when the gaze that lights on it has disappeared.

To believe and to understand are not diverse things, but the same things in different periods of growth.

I think that reality exists and that it's knowable.

I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.

Knowing demands the organ fitted to the object.

Our reason arises, at the very least, from this twofold lesson of sensuous revelations and human testimonies.

Science is nothing but perception.

Then there is the further question of what is the relationship of thinking to reality. As careful attention shows, thought itself is in an actual process of movement.

The existence of inherent limits of experience in no way settles the question about the subordination of facts of the human world to our knowledge of matter.

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

I think the films Insomnia and Memento share all sorts of thematic concerns, such as the relationship between motivation and action, and the difficulty of reconciling your view of the story with the supposed objective view of that story.

I have been a strong proponent of helping people understand that during the last decade or so, as it lies at the very bottom of how we know anything. Let me give a couple examples to get that point across.

An object painted upside down is suitable for painting because it is unsuitable as an object.

The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.

What we think of as reality is a continuous synthesis of elements from a fixed hierarchy of a priori concepts and the ever changing data of the senses.

The way in which we experience and interpret the world obviously depends very much indeed on the kind of ideas that fill our minds. If they are mainly small, weak, superficial, and incoherent, life will appear insipid , uninteresting, petty and chaotic.

Intuition is for thinking what observation is for perception. Intuition and observation are the sources of our knowledge.

The fact is one thing and the idea about the fact is another.

Thought is the measure of life.

All men naturally desire knowledge. An indication of this is our esteem for the senses; for apart from their use we esteem them for their own sake, and most of all the sense of sight. Not only with a view to action, but even when no action is contemplated, we prefer sight, generally speaking, to all the other senses. The reason of this is that of all the senses sight best helps us to know things, and reveals many distinctions.

Logic doesn't apply to the real world. D. R. Hofstadter and D. C. Dennett (eds.) The Mind's I, 1981.

Materialism is the recognition of "objects in themselves", or outside the mind; ideas and sensations are copies of images of those objects.

If thinking is like perceiving, it must be either a process in which the soul is acted upon by what is capable of being thought, or a process different from but analogous to that. The thinking part of the soul must therefore be, while impassable, capable of receiving the form of an object; that is, must be potentially identical in character with its object without being the object. Mind must be related to what is thinkable, as sense is to what is sensible.